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2009 - 2010

Programming

Anne-Lise Seusse
from September 1st 2009 to November 30th 2009

Yan Giguère
from September 12th 2009 to October 17th 2009

Sophie Bélair Clément
from September 12th 2009 to October 17th 2009

Myriam Yates
from November 7th 2009 to December 12th 2009

Jacinthe Lessard-L.
from November 7th 2009 to December 12th 2009

En conversation avec Gabor Szilasi
le November 24th 2009

Anne-Lisse Seusse
le November 26th 2009

Gabor Szilasi
from January 16th 2010 to February 20th 2010

Jaana Kokko
from January 16th 2010 to February 20th 2010

Anne-Lise Seusse, Gabor Szilasi
le January 16th 2010

Dates limites ⎟ Deadlines
from February 28th 2010 to March 1st 2010

Diane Landry
from March 13th 2010 to April 17th 2010

Kartz Ucci
from March 13th 2010 to April 17th 2010

Stéphane Gilot
from May 8th 2010 to June 12th 2010

Sylvia Winkler, Stephan Köperl
from May 8th 2010 to June 12th 2010

Olivia Boudreau
le May 25th 2010

Anne-Lise Seusse
from September 1st 2009 to November 30th 2009
Résidence de recherche jeune création

Originally from Lyon, France, Anne-Lise Seusse produces photographic work that broaches issues of territory, especially the micro phenomena of the ritualization of particular spaces through leisure activities. The creation of these singular communities - skeet-shooting retirees, or free riders traversing a military zone - gnerates situations that sometimes run counter to the location's "political" organization. Seusse's journalistic forays seek out such areas of slippage and confrontation. She pursues her research in Montreal, making portraits of young roleplayers taking part in medieval fantasy live action games at the Mont-Royal.

Yan Giguère
from September 12th 2009 to October 17th 2009
Attractions

Yan Giguère pursues his investigation of the everyday. His intuitive practice resembles a filmic composition that unfolds in the exhibition space as images interconnect to form a series of poetic and formal associations. A developing narrative is suggested by the presented environments, their deployment in separate production cycles, and the interplay of genres—mainly landscape and portraiture. Picking up where the previous series had left off, the figure of his beloved now leads us into a garden.

The photographer focuses on plants, on their suggestive power, on particular tropisms, especially those caused by light. This characteristic of plants to react to light and shadow recalls aspects of the medium of photography: effects of exposure, reactions to a light source. Their presence, like cranes reaching up into the sky, teaches us something about the structure of the process.

One notices an ascending movement in the choice of motifs and their distribution, and a progression in the arrangement of the exhibition area given the attributes of each photograph. A slew of associations emerges from the proximity of the images, like that of the magnificent white brugmansia (Trompette des anges) and a sun-shaped monstrance (the Blessed Sacrament), religious iconography that lives on in popular culture. This image, like others he has taken throughout the Quebec countryside, are documentary in nature, and Giguère likes to conjure them as signs of cultural origin and identity.

This series preserves a degree of intimacy. Layered into it are themes of the Garden of Eden, Genesis (the apple), and the temptations of artificial paradise (psychoactive properties of some plants). One has the impression of journeying through underbrush, where plants guide us in a universe that leaves traces on the photosensitive film surface. Several images also suggest the idea of foundation—a clump of struts holding up a parking area—, germination, or growth, more metaphors of the creative process, of which views of the workshop and of the beloved painter are essential components in Giguère’s work.
- Marie-Josée Lafortune

«Attractions» is the subject of articles by Jérôme Delgado («Une autre constellation lumineuse», Le Devoir, September 26th-27th, 2009), Nicolas Mavrikakis («Tropismes», Voir, October 1rst, 2009) and Sylvain Campeau («Yan Giguère», Ciel variable, spring 2010).

Yan Giguère will be at the gallery on Saturday, September 26th (12pm-5pm) for Journées de la culture 2009.

For the 13th edition of the Journées de la culture, Yan Giguère («Attractions», photography) and Sophie Bélair Clément («Le son du projecteur», conceptual art/sound installation) will be at the gallery this Saturday, September 26th : a meet-and-greet with the artists, a guided exhibition of their works and a discussion about their respective practices will take place. Admission is free. See you there!

The artist thanks the Canada Council for the Arts, le Centre Clark, l’Atelier Clark, le Centre Vu, Marie-Claude Bouthillier, Rodrigue Bélanger, Peter King, Louis Lussier and Mobile Home.

Born in Disraeli, Yan Giguère completed his studies in photography at Concordia University in 1996. His work has been shown in many artist centres and he has taken part in several group events and exhibitions. One can find his work in both private and museum collections.

Sophie Bélair Clément
from September 12th 2009 to October 17th 2009
Le son du projecteur

Sophie Bélair Clément has developed a video and audio production in which a performative body explores the idea and phenomenon of loss brought about by reproductibility. The experience of loss - replayed on the screen in slow motion and to music - exacerbates the act of hearing, concentration, and other properties of the exhibition. Works in the gallery : Adrian Piper's Bach Whistled (1970, 44 min 7 s) and Piece for a string quartet aiming to reproduce the sound of a video projector playing Bas Jan Ader’s “Nightfall” (1971, black and white silent 16 mm film, 4 min 16 s, transfered to DVD) (2009, 44 min 21 s), performed by Kingdom Shore.

➤ May 8 2008, 07 : 46
➤ FW : Re : the Space Between

Dear Sophie,

If you want to record during the day-time, Adrian Piper´s work Bach Whistled will be on which means that you would not be able to hear the Bas Jan Ader projection. Otherwise, you need to come outside of opening hours.

Kind Regards,

Marie Chrysander
Museum Anna Nordlander, Skellefteå

➤ July 27 2009, 14 : 31
➤ Re : project

Sophie.

I hope this finds you well.
we are finished with the piece.
it turned into a long undertaking here.
we could not track the piece, as we were having too much trouble hearing each other in the mix, and we divided up the parts based on the subtleties in the original file of the bulb.
also, the division and recording of strings meant that we had to recast the score together.
the writing credit should go to the whole band.
we could not find a reed player, so we used violin for the high sound. I hope that you like it.

so, we recorded it live, all together.
the human element of it was interesting. you can really hear the stress of the players at around the 24 minute mark. everyone starts to get tired, and stressed, and the strings dig in a little more, though the volume doesn’t increase.

we realized when we tried to play it, that the sound of the bulb and the projector is encased in a flimsy plastic box, and that it is resonating through there to make some of the sounds that we were hearing. also, you can hear the grinding of the motor in the original file, which made for some tough frequencies to match in the mid-range, but I think we’ve satisfied the spectrum of sound from the original.

so we put 2 microphones up, and set the players at different distances from them. you can hear the way it resonates through the house.
the biggest struggle was to find a way to represent the hissing sound that comes on the original file. we did this through mic placement, and the natural cavity of the house.
there’s a good reverb on this that makes everything sound contained, and i think we’ve matched the hiss and resonance well.

so, the instrumentation and frequency separation is as follows:

jasmine landau: mid violin ryan hough: high violin mark molnar: mid and low cello gerg horvath: mid and low bass

nathan medema dealt with engineering and balancing the recording.

warmth,
mark

«Le son du projecteur» is the subject of an article by Jesse Mckee, Sophie Bélair Clément : Le son du projecteur (Cmagazine, spring 2010)

Sophie Bélair Clément will be at the gallery on Saturday, September 26th (12pm-5pm) for Journées de la culture 2009.

For the 13th edition of the Journées de la culture, Yan Giguère («Attractions», photography) and Sophie Bélair Clément («Le son du projecteur», conceptual art/sound installation) will be at the gallery this Saturday, September 26th : a meet-and-greet with the artists, a guided exhibition of their works and a discussion about their respective practices will take place. Admission is free. See you there!

The artist thanks the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Adrian Piper Research Archive, Marie Chrysander, Mats Stjernstedt (curator of “The Space Between”) and the Musée Anna Nordlander of Skellefteå, Kingdom Shore (Mark Molnar, Jasmine Landau, Ryan Hough, Gerg Horvath, Nathan Medema and Simon Guibord), Michèle Thériault and the Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery, Dan Nguyen and Hexagram UQÀM, Marc Dulude, David Jacques, Marie-Claire Forté, Olivier Girouard and Alexandre Castonguay.

Sophie Bélair Clément has developed a video and audio production in which a performative body explores the idea and phenomenon of loss brought about by reproducibility. The experience of this loss – replayed on the screen in slow motion and to music – exacerbates the act of hearing, concentration, and other properties of the exhibition.

Kingdom Shore was formed in March of 2006. Blurring the lines between the punk rock that grew out of 1980's hardcore, avant and art rock, electroacoustic music, noise, old world gospel, and contemporary and left-field music.

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist. Bach Whistled is a durational audio performance in which Piper whistles along to a recording of Johann Sebastian Bach’s concertos in D minor, A minor and C major.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) is a renowned Baroque composer.

Myriam Yates
from November 7th 2009 to December 12th 2009
Syntoniser - Night park

Myriam Yates has developed a rapport with the image that shows an attachment to the screen, along with a marked interest for cinematic images whose forms of recording and retrieval are countercurrent to a digital approach. With each exhibition of her work, Yates further complicates this rapport, prompting us to dwell on both the narrative elements and the formal aspects of the images produced, which stage different qualities of video and film. In the gallery, she juxtaposes two spaces and temporalities from a single fiction : a now demolished hotel complex and drive-in cinema.

Yates makes frequent use of the still image in this series, placing us before moments suspended in time. A sad, melancholic sense of wandering emanates from the images, along with a sweeping vision of abandoned, obsolete venues, in city centres, or on their outskirts. It is difficult to distinguish what they represent from the source of an affective response, particularily our sense of space and time.

Both the presence of nature in these spaces – marking a passage of time – as well as the architectural references in the landscape are decisive factors in the construction of this affect. Their indicial nature informs us on the subject of the experience, the origin of the narrative, and the site of a vanishing symbolic activity which stirs in us a consciousness we identify with.

Several temporalities coexist within the image. They are accentuated further by the effects of superimposition. Yates is not only interested in the screen as a projection surface, but also with what surrounds it. She directs our attention to the youthful users and seasonal activity of an open-air cinema, which she documents together with the phased demolition of a hotel complex. Her images, thus layered and deconstructed, meld into a recomposed (non-)space.
- Marie-Josée Lafortune

Born in Montreal in 1971, Myriam Yates works with photography and video installation. She documents and reflects upon public spaces and the many relationships we have with them. Her projects have been shown at the Mois de la Photo à Montréal, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and at various events, including the Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin.

The artist wishes to thank Ciné-Parc Orford and the City of Sherbrooke.

Jacinthe Lessard-L.
from November 7th 2009 to December 12th 2009
En fonction de la forme

In works conjuring pictorial forms of modernity, Jacinthe Lessard-L. explores the aesthetics of our everyday lives and living spaces, the interstices between the normative and the individual. She is particularly interested in contemporary realities resulting from the democratization of design. Her current work exacerbates the phenomenon of commodification present in earlier series, as she investigates the potential residing in the polymers that now pervade our visual culture, particularly the packaging of trivial objects. Explorations of these colourful resurgences reveal an evocative power, as the critical distance of the photographic medium and the ambiguity of the image suggest certain minimalist practices and betray traces of modernist idealism.

Indeed, though the series presented in the gallery may at first seem self-evident, it harbours various levels of meaning. Lessard-L. calls upon our collective memory and each spectator, prompted by more or less implicit visual citations, will bring their referents to bear, creating unique intertextual linkages. Thus the ornamental nature of the work, combined with effects of materials and textures, sometimes suggest decorative fabric; outlines, whether sharply defined, fleeting or incandescent, can suggest rayograms; for some, the flat bands of bright colour will recall Colourfield Painting; others will think of International Klein Blue, despite the fact that the construction of the image, its coloured material, is determined by the products themselves.

That said, colour isn’t entirely freed from its situational and figurative references: despite all the manipulations it has undergone, we can sometimes make out the uncanny familiarity of the materials at the root of the work. One shouldn’t confuse these chromogenic prints with digital works, however. Here, the found objects are captured in their original packaging and only the lighting, composition, and darkroom manipulations are brought to bear in the production of a photograph whose ambiguity tests the limits of the medium’s documentary function.
- Geneviève Bédard

Jacinthe Lessard-L. completed her master’s in visual arts at Concordia University in 2006. Her projects have been exhibited in Quebec, and in the cities of Toronto, Nancy, Götenborg, Glasgow. Her exhibition “reGeneration 2 : photographes de demain” will soon be on display at the Musée de L’Élysée in Lausanne.

En conversation avec Gabor Szilasi
November 24th 2009
Fundraising campaign
Cocktail | Conference | Art exhibition + sale

Gabor Szilasi’s work is undeniably seminal in the history of contemporary Canadian photograpy. At the University Club of Montreal, he will talk intimately about his career and offer a selection of original artworks that bear witness to a priveleged point of view. Three photographs marking three significant periods of Gabor's career will exceptionally be for sale. Enthusiasts and collectors take note! Gabor Szilasi, represented by Art45 gallery, is the 2009 laureate of the prix Paul-Émile-Borduas.

"En conversation avec Gabor Szilasi" is an invitation of Alain Ishak, director for Quebec at the Hay Group, president of the University Club of Montreal and member of OPTICA's board of directors. All proceeds from the evening will go towards the center’s activities and the William A. Ewing grant. OPTICA is enrolled in the "Programme Placements Culture" (Government of Quebec); the gallery also has a endowment fund, administered by the Foundation of Greater Montreal.

November 24th, 5pm-8pm
En conversation avec Gabor Szilasi
Cocktail | Conference | Art exhibition + sale
Cost of the event : 65$ (including a 30$ donation, with tax receipt)
University Club of Montreal
2047, Mansfield
Montreal, Quebec H3A 1Y7
Reservations : 514.874.1666 ⎢ communications@optica.ca
Business casual dresscode
RSVP before November 20th

   Gabor Szilasi, Motocyclistes au lac Balaton, 1954
   Gelatin silver print
   12 3/4 x 18 7/8" (image); 16 x 20" (paper)
   Signed on the back
   sold   2 500$

   Gabor Szilasi, Dunn's, 888-902 rue Ste-Catherine Ouest, Montréal, 1977
   Gelatin silver print
   14 3/4 x 18 5/8" (image); 16 x 20" (paper)
   Signed on the back
   sold   2 500$

   Gabor Szilasi, Salle de bain chez André et Marie-Rose Houde, Lotbinière, janvier 1977
   Chromogenic colour print
   15 1/16 x 18 7/8" (image); 16 x 20" (paper)
   Signed on the back
   2 500$

Anne-Lisse Seusse
November 26th 2009

*5@7 :: Thursday November 26th*

You are cordially invited to a public presentation by Anne-Lise Seusse – an artist originally from Lyon having just completed a three-month residency at OPTICA – this Thursday, November 26th. She will talk about her photographic practice, especially the research done in Montreal this fall. The conference will start around 5pm and will be followed by a cocktail. All are welcomed!

Originally from Lyon, Anne-Lise Seusse produces photographic work that broaches issues of territory, especially the micro phenomena of the ritualization of particular spaces through leisure activities. The creation of these singular communities – skeet-shooting retirees, or free riders traversing a military zone – generates situations that sometimes run counter to the location's "political" organization. Seusse's journalistic forays seek out such areas of slippage and confrontation.

OPTICA (Montreal) and art3 (Valence) initiated a combined residency and grant program for young artists. The host organizations’ primary functions are to serve as mediator for artists working in new environments and setting up meetings with professionals in the field. At the end of the three-month residency, the grant recipient makes his or her work public; a publication is co-produced by OPTICA and art3 the following year.

Gabor Szilasi
from January 16th 2010 to February 20th 2010
Polaroid Portraits

Curator : Marie-Josée Lafortune

In 1974, Gabor Szilasi began producing a series of portraits on Polaroid film, a project he pursued until 2002. Rarely shown and never printed in their entirety, these images assemble close, intimist shots, mainly of women, family members, and fellow artists and photographers. For this exhibition, OPTICA has commissioned the artist for fifteen limited edition (3/3) prints, several of them as yet unpublished.

The series can be divided into two periods, according to the film used: the first portraits were captured onto Polaroid 105 film (renamed 665 in 1977), employed by the artist until 1988; as of 1989, Szilasi opted for Polaroid 55. With the latter, one is immediately engaged by the frontal gaze. In contrast to those taken of rural Quebec in the 1970s, these photos are laden with more psychological import.

Indeed, the composition follows the linear paths of the natural light as it bathes and sculpts his subjects’ faces. Using a small depth of field, Szilasi isolates the subject within the environment. The use of a 4x5 view camera brings clarity to details; rather than extend the realism, however, the artist accentuates the blurred focus.

Thus, while some images are marked by high contrast, others have a more romantic flavour, like the portrait of Doreen Lindsay, Westmount (December 1989), conjuring photographic images of the Victorian era, especially those of Julia Margaret Cameron. Some prints from the first series—those of Rafael Bendahan, Montreal (1977), and of the artist’s father, Sándor Szilasi, Montreal (1977)—draw instead from the archetypal aesthetic of ID photos.

Contrary to the popular association of the Polaroid with the culture of instant snapshots, Szilasi produces his portraits in the studio tradition, where the 4x5 camera significantly slows down the process. And Polaroid’s independent “pack” film—comprising both the negative and the positive—allows him to hand a print over to the subject before proceeding with the final development of the image. The subject’s active involvement in the portrait is a crucial element in Szilasi’s process, recalling the practice of other portrait artists, such as David Octavius Hill (1802-1870), August Sander’s “assisted portraits” (1876-1964), or the “portrait documents” of Walker Evans (1903-1975).

We needn’t emphasize a direct relationship between these works and this series of Polaroid portraits, but one must nonetheless admit that a methodology is at work that, while characteristic of Szilasi’s individual practice, also enmeshes it within a history, constructing the subject in relation to this tradition.
- Marie-Josée Lafortune

Gabor Szilasi’s profoundly humanist work has undeniable significance in the history of contemporary Canadian photography. Born in Budapest in 1928, he has captured the social transformations in Quebec and Hungary from the 1950s to the present. He also influenced a whole generation of photographers through his teaching. Winner of the 2009 Prix Paul-Émile-Borduas, Szilasi is considered a pioneer of documentary social photography in Quebec. His work is included in innumerable collections in Canada and in Europe. He is represented by art45 gallery in Montreal.

The artist wishes to thank the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec for its support, as well as Michael Flomen.

Jaana Kokko
from January 16th 2010 to February 20th 2010
Life Must Be Alive

Jaana Kokko has developed a body of video work in which the spatial configuration shapes the totality of being. Two videos are presented in the gallery: Modern Times (Transcription) (1982/2006) and The Anarch (2008)—drawn from the series "Who am I, What am I, Why am I"—, both of which testify to a desire for interrogating the value of the document as representation of reality and as element of fiction. Speech, here, carries a story, knowledge and memory; in an examination of power relationships, the artist brings it to the screen through individual and familial interviews.

Modern Times (Transcription) (1982/2006) is constructed around an interview conducted by the artist and her friend—when they were both 10 years old—on the day-to-day activities of a woman and a man. Kokko takes up this old recording and turns it into the soundtrack for a new filmic structure, thus bringing two parallel worlds together. On the screen, images shot in 2006: in an empty space, a young woman cleans a display cabinet and places a tape-recorder. Subtitles appear, drawn from the 1982 interview: a synchronized transcription of the dialogue (translated into English) and ambient sounds. This temporal divergence, the spareness of the setting, and the disembodied nature of the soundtrack heightens the fictionality of the document, mirroring the discrepancy between the reality of the interviewed protagonists and what they imagined they would become.

In The Anarch (2008), Kokko attempts to redefine the concept of anarchy in opposition to the widespread misconception that associates it with nihilism, chaos, and terrorism. She asks Veikko Leväaho (1924-2009) to relate his experience—he had been court-martialled during the Continuation War between Finland and the Soviet Union (1941-1944)—and to explain his conception of a wholly just, ideal society.
- Geneviève Bédard + Marie-Josée Lafortune

Finnish artist Jaana Kokko holds an M.A. from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki (2002) and M.Sc. in economics from the Helsinki School of Economics (1999). She has exhibited and has taken part in many video festivals in Finland, Russia, and Europe.

The artist wishes to thank the Arts Council of Finland for its support.

Anne-Lise Seusse, Gabor Szilasi
January 16th 2010
Artist projects distributed as free posters

*Points of distribution are now online!*

As of January 2010, original artist projects related to OPTICA’s programming and archives are freely distributed as posters at the gallery, as well as in different libraries, bookstores, centres, galleries and museums. The first posters highlight the work Gabor Szilasi and Anne-Lise Seusse. A list of points of distribution is now available on our website. OPTICA invites you then on a cultural circuit throughout the city : keep an eye out, look around, and start a collection!

See below for locations addresses as of March 26th, 2010. It is often updated to include all points of distribution.

MONTRÉAL
1 Parisian Laundry, 3550 Saint-Antoine West
2 CCA_librairie/bookstore, 1920 Baile Street
3 Fofa Gallery, 1515 rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest
4 Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, 1400 blvd de Maisonneuve West
5 Darling Foundry, 745 Ottawa Street
6 Artexte,460 Sainte-Catherine West, # 508
7 Optica, 372 Sainte-Catherine West, # 508
8 Médiathèque du Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 185 Sainte-Catherine West
9 Galerie de l’UQAM, Université du Québec à Montréal, Pavillon Judith-Jasmin, 1400 Berri Street
10 Cinémathèque québécoise, 335 blvd de Maisonneuve East
11 MAI, Montréal Arts Interculturels, 3680 Jeanne-Mance Street
12 Oboro, 4001 Berri, #301
13 Librairie Le port de tête, 262 Mont-Royal East
14 Centre Clark, 5455 avenue De Gaspé, #114

FRANCE, Paris
15 Délégation générale du Québec à Paris, 66 rue Pergolèse, Paris, France
16 Librairie du Québec, 30 rue Gay Lussac, Paris, France

FRANCE, Valence
17 art3 art contemporain, 8 rue Sabaterie, Valence, France

Dates limites ⎟ Deadlines
from February 28th 2010 to March 1st 2010
February 28th : call for projects
(2011 programming)
March 1rst : call for proposals (residency)

For more information, please click on the following links for our annual call for projects, as well as our research residency program (Montreal - Valence, France). Thank you!

Diane Landry
from March 13th 2010 to April 17th 2010
Knight of infinite resignation

Experience is one of the motifs of Diane Landry’s practice, a way of understanding , exploring the world in a intuitive way in her relation to the object and time. A multidisciplinary artist working in performance, she creates a kinetic universe from ordinary objects whose main purpose, meaning, and attributed values she diverts and re-utilizes, ultimately aiming to change the emotional memories tied to their recognition. Whether automated or fixed, the body in performance serves as a yardstick for the study of time and movement, material that is then taken up in archetypal form in her installations.

In the gallery, large luminous wheels made of plastic bottles and containers of sand revolve in the space, transforming it into a Luna Park. The alternating shadows and light of their revolutions allude to the passage of time, the alternation of day and night. The installation Knight of Infinite Resignation (2009), conceived during a residency at L’Oeil de Poisson in Quebec City, makes a disquieting allusion to the performance L’Imperméable, presented at Mois Multi the same year, where Landry, suspended and fixed upon a motorized structure, pivots on an axis and becomes a human hourglass. Though these works are separate, it’s hard not to think of them as a sequence, allowing us to appreciate the contribution of her performance as "source" material for her perceptual practice.

The fascination with animated surfaces—an archaeology of the image characteristic of the cinematographer—informs the exhibition, the mesmerizing effect of the projected shadows in particular. Additionally, Landry pursues her investigation of the everyday in Juggling (2009), an animation-performance-video in which the artist appears in silhouette before a window. Every minute for twenty-four hours, a picture is taken to document the pose. The fixed images are then animated, time condensed, and experience reconstructed in staccato motion. The speed of the projection is one of a silent film (16 images/second), and Landry complicates our rapport with the image by introducing objects that she moves while remaining apparently motionless. A performance indeed.
- Marie-Josée Lafortune

An exhibition strongly recommended by Nicolas Mavrikakis ("Renouveau hivernal", Voir, January 14th, 2010) and Jérôme Delgado ("Arts visuels - Entre les murs des galeries", Le Devoir, January 16th, 2010)! «Knight of Infinite Resignation» is the subject of an article by Marie-Ève Charron («Roues égrenant le temps», Le Devoir, 20-21 mars 2010)

   DVD
   Knight of Infinite Resignation & What Comes Out in the Wash
   Essays by Alison Syme

   Distribution :
   L’Œil de Poisson
   Vacuohm
   28 pages booklet with color photos
   DVD
   Video ntsc ~ 45 min
   5 installations & 3 performances 2008-2009
   extra : 2 interviews and technical documentation on the performance l’Imperméable.
   ISBN 978-2-9803525-9-1

"There are 237 bottles here, the liquid contents of which would apparently fill a bath—no more. The short-sightedness of human management of natural resources is made pitifully obvious by the work’s evocation of cosmic time, in comparison with which the human lifespan and even the existence of the species seem simply irrelevant. And there is something terrifying about this assemblage, which is so cold and serene, so unperturbed by the viewer’s presence."
- Alison Syme

This booklet accompanies the exhibition Knight of Infinite Resignation, a project created by Diane Landry, commissioned by l´Œil de Poisson with funding from the Canada Council for Arts. The exhibition was presented for the first time in Québec City from September 11 to October 18, 2009.

Diane Landry lives and works in Quebec City. Honoured with many prizes and awards, she has exhibited and participated in residencies at venues throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Publications have appeared dealing with her work and, in 2009, the Musée d’art de Joliette organized her first retrospective. She is represented by the Solway Jones gallery in Los Angeles.

Kartz Ucci
from March 13th 2010 to April 17th 2010
368 songs with the word sad in the title mixed into one song

Kartz Ucci’s multidisciplinary practice is informed by language theory and philosophy. With an unapologetic inclination for the romanticism, she reveals that her works and their subjects are often inspired and (re)defined according to her emotional response to different spaces. Especially concerned with notions of reproducibility and reappropriation, she endeavours to reinterpret existing texts, musical pieces, and films by adopting various conceptual strategies, which then give direction to the form and content of her productions.

368 songs with the word sad in the title mixed into one song was produced by collecting the number of songs explicitly mentioned in the title: downloaded off the Internet by searching for the key-word "sad" in various GNUtella (1) engines, the collected MP3 files were then combined in an audio-editing program to compose a new soundtrack that was transferred to vinyl. Ucci leaves things up to the suggestive power of the senses and proposes a concrete experience of the paradox intrinsic to the quest for happiness as the end of human action: a fundamental philosophical contradiction between wishing for happiness and being at a loss for the means of reaching it or for knowing what it is.

The gallery installation includes two devices articulated around the audio work: a massive panel covered by a layer of lead—its monochrome surface investing the space while improving its acoustics—, and a mural listing of the song titles arranged in an iridescent spiral. This recurring natural symbol (a formal reminder of the LP and turntable) may be as suggestive of the infinite and cosmological as of dizzying confusion, or indeed of any expansive movement—creative spiral or dextrorotation, clockwise, according to Greek mythology—or a contracting one—the counter, so-called destructive spiral or levorotation. Here, an invisible centrifugal force dissipates the visual obstruction, hearkening back to the din that is itself slowly dissipating. . . Like that sensory (over-)stimulation that gradually gives way to harmonious simplicity, happiness may simply be a direction, a whole rather than a summation (2).
- Geneviève Bédard

(1) Gnutella is a decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing network.
(2) Paul Ricoeur

After brief tenures at the universities of York, McMaster, and Ryerson, Kartz Ucci, originally from Ontario, has been teaching at the University of Oregon since 2004. Her work circulates widely in the Americas, in Europe, and in Asia.

Stéphane Gilot
from May 8th 2010 to June 12th 2010
The Performative City

Stéphane Gilot has been redefining our relationship to space since 2001. His hybrid constructions and imaginary locales invite us to take part in an array of situations. Dubbed plans d’évasions (loosely, “escape plans” or “plans for escapsim”), these constructions are “model worlds,” a set of autonomous units that contribute to the construction of the “performative city,” an on-going and evolving project. The presentation of these structures—drawings, models, shelters, video components—betray a marked interest in the social organization of cities, in our behavioural habits, and in a reconsidered anthropology of habitat. Now, in a curatorial synthesis of these environments, Gilot actualizes the “model worlds,” adding new neighbourhoods, and casting a reflexive gaze both on the process itself and on the authorial relationships and relationships of authority engaged with those who are called upon to inhabit the city.

Broadcast on video, the participants’ ability (or inability) to live together lays bare the imperfections of an (overcharged) modernity perceived as a living spectacle: though its playfulness is fully developed, it convincingly illustrates the frantic virtualization of a world where the accessibility and speed of information gives one the feeling of travelling the universe while standing still (an impression suggested by the rapport between exhibition space and city space). “The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space,” Michel Foucault said in 1967. “We are in the epoch of simultaneity, [. . .] of juxtaposition, [. . .] of the near and the far, of the side-by-side, of the dispersed [. . . .] our experience of the world is less that of a long life developing through time than that of a network that connects points and intersects with its own skein.”

Such borderline areas articulating the singularity and plurality of worlds are very present in the performative city. Moreover, this observation recalls Foucault’s concept of heterotopia, the notion of a space of non-space, “[. . .] capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible.” Skillfully conjuring these intertwined spaces—like those experimented with in theatre, for instance—, Gilot takes action and assembles various utopian spaces into a single work where they serve as interfaces between reality and fiction, inverting our rapport with the real and imagination while simultaneously compelling us to recognize and trust their functionality in the organization of the city.
- Marie-Josée Lafortune

1 Michel Foucault, «Dits et écrits 1984 , Des espaces autres (conférence au Cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967)», in Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité, no. 5, octobre 1984, pp. 46-49. (Translation by Jay Miskowiec, "foucault.info").
2 Ibid, p.46

Stéphane Gilot would like to thank le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec as well as Frédéric Lavoie, the inhabitants of the performative city – Anne Bérubé, Caroline Boileau, Belinda Campbell, Caroline Dubois, Rachel Echenberg, Mathieu Latulippe, François Morelli, Alisha Piercy, Victoria Stanton, Sylvie Tourangeau et Emma Waltraud Howes.

Addition financial support from Optica enabled the realisation of this premier synthesis presentation of The Performative City.

An artist to look out for in 2010 : "Arts visuels - Entre les murs des galeries" (Jérôme Delgado, Le Devoir, January 16th, 2010).

«The Performative City» is the subject of an article by Jérôme Delgado, («Cités de demain, cités d'aujourd'hui», Le Devoir, May 22th-23th 2010.)

Originally from Belgium, Stéphane Gilot has been living and working in Montreal since 1996. His performative spaces include the following presentations of “model-worlds”:
Jeu vidéo – vitrine, UQÀM, Montréal (2004), Jeu vidéo – monde 1, Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto (2005), Centre Oboro, Montréal (2006), Jeu vidéo – monde 2, Transmediale 06, Berlin (2006), Centre Cinéplastique, Pierre-François Ouellette art contemporain, Montréal (2006), Cineplastic Station, Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto (2007), Cineplastic Station 2, Galerie F. Desimpel, Bruxelles (2007),Cineplastic Center 2, Salvaging Utopia, Truck Gallery, Calgary (2007), Hurricane Building, Vowles Building, Flux Gallery, New York (2007), Cineplastic Campus, Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga (2008).

Sylvia Winkler, Stephan Köperl
from May 8th 2010 to June 12th 2010
Urbang

Sylvia Winkler and Stephan Köperl’s interventions in public spaces offer critical perspectives on urban planning in the cities they visit. They produce video commentaries about them, composing socially engaged songs that playfully critique real estate projects and their implementation, deconstructing promoters’ messages, and alerting us to the processes of uniformity and appropriation at work in citizen space. Jin Bi Lu (1997), 3rd Space (2007), and Make No $mall Plans (2008) are videos that testify to the transformations of urban life in the cities of Kunming and Chengdu, in China, and in Montreal’s Griffintown district.

Jin Bi Lu (1997) deals with the exodus of once well-off families from the old neighbourhoods of Kunming, in southern China. The subsequent demolition of the historic, but run-down, vacated buildings reflects the region’s deteriorating economy and social fabric. Wandering through the ruins on a tricycle, Köperl sings “Gold-Jade-Avenue” (Jin Bi Lu), to the tune of a song that was popular at the time.

3rd Space (2007) is the commercial name given to one of the many real estate projects under way in downtown Chengdu. Wanting to validate the project on solid intellectual grounds, the promotional brochure cites the writings of Virginia Woolf and conjures the social and urban philosophy of Jürgen Habermas and Ray Oldenburg. Adopting the tone of a broadcast announcer, Winkler recites the entire text at three different locations in the area.

Make No $mall Plans (2008) was produced after public demonstrations against development plans in the Griffintown neighbourhood. Impressed by the scope of the debate, Winkler and Köperl made the controversial question an integral part of their work during an international Canada Council of the Arts residency at the Darling Foundry. Set to the tune of a Deep Purple song released when Griffintown began to transform into its current state, the words they sing as a duet comment on the situation and show their support for the activists; the title and refrain, however, refer to the real estate company’s mission statement.
- Geneviève Bédard + Marie-Josée Lafortune

Works presented in the gallery
Jin Bi Lu, People’s Republic of China, 1997, 7 min.
3rd Space, People’s Republic of China, 2007, 2 min.
Make No $mall Plans, Montreal, 2008, 5 min. 30 sec.

«Urbang» is the subject of an article by Jérôme Delgado, («Cités de demain, cités d'aujourd'hui», Le Devoir, May 22th-23th 2010.)

Sylvia Winkler and Stephan Köperl have formed and an artist duo since 1997. Graduates of the Stuttgart Academy of Fine Arts, their site-specific urban interventions develop from observations in public space which they transform into actions where the initially observed situation remains recognizable while various modifications establish a new context.

On April 22, Winkler and Köperl presented PPR Experience, an installation-presentation-animation presented as part of Earth Day at Square St-Louis, from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., and then at the Goethe-Institute, from 3 p.m. to 4:45 p.m.

Olivia Boudreau
May 25th 2010
Olivia Boudreau :: 2010 Laureate of the résidence de recherche jeune création Montréal-Valence

Since 2007 art3 and Optica have been initiating a residency exchange programme focussed on emerging artists. Its primary goal is to provide time for reflection to an young artist with a promising, and already active practice.

Optica is proud to announce that following a deliberation committee Saturday May 22nd regarding the selection of a Québec based artist for the second edition of the residency programme, the candidacy of Montreal artist, Olivia Boudreau was retained. Olivia will be heading for Valence in autumn, 2010 to continue developing her research on the theme of the indistinct. The jury was comprised of Marie-Ève Charron, art-critic for Le Devoir, Sylvie Gilbert, director of Artexte, Marie-Josée Lafortune, director of Optica, and Sylvie Vojik. director of art3 in Valence. This year, the programme offers the recipient the added possiblility for a residency sojourn at Moly-Sabata in Isère.

The residency exchange programme receives the support from the Ministère des relations internationales du Québec, and the Consulate Generals of France (in the context of the 62nd session of the Commission permanente de coopération franco-québécoise).

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